I have been fairly impressed with some of the LFR encounters this expansion. T14 was kind of mindless but there have been some pretty good fights in T15 and T16 in which you can't have a raid ignore fight mechanics unless building stacks of Determination is the goal. I especially like doing the nests on Jikun.

However why aren't AFK people automatically removed like in PVP? Why aren't there DPS and healing thresholds that must be met? Why is nothing done to counter queue cheating (queuing as healer then specing as DPS or going AFK)? Why are characters that fail the armory audit (gems, enchants) allowed to queue?

We can't have a well designed encounter for LFR and have leech-like behaviour left unpunished, it just becomes too frustrating for those who are trying. If Blizzard don't do something about this they will continue to haemorrhage subs because LFR is becoming increasingly bad tempered. 3 hour SoO LFR wings because 5+ people are leeching causing raids to constantly fall apart and the remaining people are stuck in a queue waiting for a tank is not fun. The absurdly low ilevel threshold for SoO LFR doesn't help either.

Recently one hunter was being really blatant about it and argued that if other people are going to auto-attack/AFK then why shouldn't he and that there were no punishments for it anyway and I guess he's right. Even if he does get vote kicked he can just queue again. There are no repercussions for anti-social behaviour in this game because of the queue system and the game eroding more and more with each expansion the concept of a self-regulating server community. You can AFK (or play like crap) your way through the whole raiding content and to a full tier set so of course people will try it, where's the incentive to NOT do that?

If Blizzard do nothing about this the quality of the player base will continue to tank as the decent people give up altogether because of too many unpleasant experiences.

How does a central authority police anti-social behavior across hundreds of servers and many more instance groups?

How do you distinguish between someone who is intentionally tanking vs someone who is trying but not very good? Conversely they would have to build in protections for the person who tries but isn't very good from constantly being punished by people not wanting to deal with them in random match making content.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

We can debate whether we think people should even be doing LFR if they don't even have a rudimentary knowledge of their spec and that all that auto-attacking is because they don't know better (effectively being dead weight that others are expected to carry) but I think that's another discussion.

I don't think it's asking too much of Blizzard to have an auto-removal system to combat AFKers and queue cheats and not allowing people who fail their character audit to queue. That at least would be a start but if they won't even do that then talk of DPS thresholds or actions per minute is moot.

So I shouldn't be able to queue for LFR if I log out in my RP Cloth set or my Ret set that is missing enchants? Heck I went two weeks without enchanting my main spec weapon since weapon enchants for tanks are the last thing on my mind.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

Nikachelle wrote:I don't see the problem with booting AFKers a la pvp really.

It'd have to be a big complex solution hopefully not based on the PvP timer to engage in combat with another player. If it was a timer to engage in PvE combat you could have a core group of important roles hijack a group before a boss pull until they force people who are not AFK to get booted from the raid by AFK kicking. Not to mention that it would have to be a sustained period of combat to clear the debuff to remove the temptation to pull the boss and wipe the group to clear your timer.

It would have to be an explicit action by each player, not blindly clicking Yes or No to a no reason given prompt, and require enough of the raid that would make hijacking harder, say 75% of the raid.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

Or you could just not subject yourself to the stupidity of LFR in the first place.

Blizzard will never waste that much development resources on LFR. LFR has been a dump since it's inception and it's just now coming to the forefront now that actual raiders have zero reason to be there. Anyone competent with 2 free hours a week is running flex and not playing retard roulette wiping for 3 1/2 hours for gear that is a lower ilevel than last tiers normal gear.

Teranoid wrote:Or you could just not subject yourself to the stupidity of LFR in the first place.

Blizzard will never waste that much development resources on LFR. LFR has been a dump since it's inception and it's just now coming to the forefront now that actual raiders have zero reason to be there. Anyone competent with 2 free hours a week is running flex and not playing retard roulette wiping for 3 1/2 hours for gear that is a lower ilevel than last tiers normal gear.

I had hoped to do Flex but players have turned it into a distraction for raiders, not a progression path for those wanting to make the step up from LFR. Finding a group in my situation (no achievements, mediocre gear) isn't obvious as literally nobody I played with last expansion is on my server or faction (and the ones that still are have quit the game). I may give Openraid a try but I am not massively fussed as once I have my cloak and a Garrosh kill I will likely put my account back into hibernation.

I agree more should be done to deal with negativity in LFR. I find it a bit bizarre that everyone hates on LFR and waxes lyrical about openraid/oqueue when they seem functionally very similar (queuing systems for raids).

On keeping out the "bads", for skill, I think proving grounds should and will be used in future. For gear, the ilevel requirement should also be more nuance: e.g. equipped, valid for spec, and not just in bags. Some adjustment for gems/enchants and different weighting for different slots (e.g. weapon>all for dps).

If the issue is slacking, then maybe some reward for good performance? Rather like the bonus VP you get for the timed objective in heroic scenarios, give players bonus VP if perform above a certain (modest) bar, like >50% of benchmark dps/hps. It could vary with gear, so more is expected of geared players or could just simply be a league table with more rewards to those topping the charts. I don't think a bonus is needed for tanks, as if they fail, it's obvious and painful (hence the long wait for tank replacements).

Maybe some reward for good raid leadership so that it means something? e.g. when the raid quits, everyone gets a screen asking them to rate the raid leader. She gets bonus VP if she receives a certain level of (anonymous) positive feedback.

I wonder if the rewards should be more than extra VPs: maybe a second bonus roll for the last boss?

What you propose would be too much troll-friendly. Queue with premade just to rate people down or up

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

On keeping out the "bads", for skill, I think proving grounds should and will be used in future.

How exactly would Proving Grounds be used to weed out the 'bad' or 'less skilled' player?

I mean, using myself as the example, I find Proving Grounds horribly boring for solo play content. Does that mean I'm a bad player? A less skilled player than the guy who thrives for the solo content and just does it over and over and over and over because that's his thing? I dabble in a lot of stuff, but there's just some things I just don't do because A. it's optional, and B. it's not fun to me.

Tecnically asking to beat a solochallenge in order to get a "rank of skill" isn't a wrong thing per se.

However, as you said, it risks of being horribly boring for people who don't enjoy solo content who would feel forced to go through it, expecially in its current very repetitive iteration.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

In my experience, it frequently only takes one person to step up and make an LFR run good (or step down and make it bad, so to speak). If you end up with someone in the raid who is willing to offer instruction, feedback, and praise for boss kills, it can actually be fun.

I've started doing it in SoO wing 1 runs, and it is night and day compared to runs where everyone bitches at everyone else from beginning to end. Yeah, you still have people who are being carried, but unless it's half the raid you generally have enough dps and healing to make it work. It's not like the LFR fights are tuned that tightly anyway.

Fenrìr wrote:How exactly would Proving Grounds be used to weed out the 'bad' or 'less skilled' player?

Easiest option would be to say you need gold for your role on your character in order to queue for LFR.

I also don't find PG to be sufficiently compelling to want to do endless rounds, but doing gold it did seem to be quite a good test of basic tank competence: picking up mobs, damaging them and surviving.

The required time investment (about 30 mins) would be trivial compared to all these grinds we do for valor, honor or rep. Or compared to actually queuing for and running LFR each week.

I am not sure it is the lack of skill that is the problem with LFR though - it may be the slacking or the lack of etiquette. Hence my proposals to address for all three issues. Right now there's also a lack of information about boss mechanics which is making things much more painful, but that largely passes with time.

But again, Econ21, I'm going to point you to the simple statement of "It's not engaging enough for me to do it". Sure, you may find it's a measly 30 minutes, but that's 30 mins of complete and utter boredom that I'm not going to enjoy just because there's this stipulation of having to have it. To each their own, I understand that, but when a company starts to set a hard barrier (attunements much?), it tends to drive away a certain player base. And for Blizzard, they're here for the money.

So when players start to put that stipulation on stuff, then you're getting into what people see of requirements of having to have the last boss of a raid already killed before they can get into a pug. They're good players, but they won't ever see the raid because they don't have X or Y achievement.

Fenrìr wrote:...it tends to drive away a certain player base. And for Blizzard, they're here for the money.

You may be right. There's a trade off: would schemes to socially engineer the player base deter more players than they attract by improving the experience? I don't know. Personally, I think LFR is now too important for business to be allowed to fail and that making it less toxic would be good for Blizzard's finances.

Well Fenrir, one could have argued as well that the whole 30 minutes it takes to get 460 ilvl to enter first LFR are boring, but they are there [well, not there if you are a rich bastard, but w/e ]Artificial cockblocks that force you to prove you actually have more brain and coordination than my 1 yr nephew would be a good thing. Similarly to how most competitive games require you to do some "placement rounds" before putting you into the actual teamwork environment with people of your same skill.

theckhd wrote:Fuck no, we've seen what you do to guilds. Just imagine what you could do to an entire country. Just visiting the US might be enough to make the southern states try to secede again.

halabar wrote:Noo.. you don't realize the problem. Worldie was to negative guild breaking energy like Bolvar is to the Scourge. If Worldie is removed, than someone must pick up that mantle, otherwise that negative guild breaking energy will run rampant, destroying all the servers.

Well Fenrir, one could have argued as well that the whole 30 minutes it takes to get 460 ilvl to enter first LFR are boring, but they are there

I feel like that's another apples and oranges comparison, Worldie, but not as much as the first point. I don't view a natural character progression path as a hard stipulation or as an extra thing to complete. Boring...yes, leveling alts can be boring to some people; however if you take the time to level the alt to raid or to kill time from your main, you're naturally going to be going for that gear.

Similarly to how most competitive games require you to do some "placement rounds" before putting you into the actual teamwork environment with people of your same skill.

Now that would be an interesting concept and might renew the interest in LFR / LFD ques for the base of who LFR is designed for.

I think it's interesting you think 30mins in a proving ground is a waste of time or boring when you can lose infinitely more time in LFR.

Yesterday i joined an LFR group on Nazgrim that already had two stacks of wipe buff. Even with that the boss enraged with 25% hp remaining. Perhaps Blizzard have just set the bar to high for Nazgrim, the average raid DPS was approximately 60k per DPS.

As a tank on my alt BrM i new exactly what to do, I crontrolled the boss and adds as appropriate, instructed the raid to not attack during defensive stance and to interrupt and kill the shaman as a priority, all of which was conducted to a resoanable degree.

It wasn't until the 4th wipe buff and over an hour of my time had been spent on a single boss that we killed him.

Every time i queue for LFR it wastes AT LEAST 1/2 hour of my time, and every time i queue for LFR i'm reminded why i shouldn't.

Let me frank, I have not stepped foot into an LFR since I got my Runestones last patch. I know LFR is there mostly for the people who have no desire to be in a competitive raid guild or they simply want to see the content. I feel like that is conversation that's been hashed enough in another thread.

But LFR is not for me. The frustration from wipes, the lack of participation and the overall lack of knowledge of fights is not fun and quite frankly, boring and a waste of time.

But going back to the whole Proving Grounds as, basically, an attunement to get into LFR...you cannot expect people who do it to still go look up strats. There might be a slightly higher percentage, but there's still going to be those people who go into LFR and afk, underperform and/or stand in stuff only because they're expecting everyone else to carry them because it's LFR and you can ignore most mechanics (old mentality, I know, but that mentality still exists which is quite proven in your previous experience).

Besides, I'm not complaining that I find 30 mins a waste of time or boring, I'm pointing out that you cannot set a stipulation in today's WoW and expect the people who content is geared for to be in that content. Sure it does equate to that '30' minutes to get that stipulation...if you get it done in 1 go. What happens if you wipe and got to start over? Then you're just adding time to it. Yea, you could argue that it's a 1 and done thing, which is what all attunements have been, but it's forcing people to go do X for Y thing.

Now, I can get behind Worldie's suggestion of you're grouped with people who have done Proving Grounds on a similar level.

Fenrìr wrote:But going back to the whole Proving Grounds as, basically, an attunement to get into LFR...you cannot expect people who do it to still go look up strats. There might be a slightly higher percentage, but there's still going to be those people who go into LFR and afk, underperform and/or stand in stuff only because they're expecting everyone else to carry them because it's LFR and you can ignore most mechanics (old mentality, I know, but that mentality still exists which is quite proven in your previous experience).

I don't think anybody is saying that achieving something on PG would be a magic bullet solution to fix all of LFR's many ills; there simply isn't one. It needs to be a combination of several things and I think getting a gold would at least fix one of the problems and raise the skill level of the player base.